


Mega-annum

by Mizufae



Category: Merlin (BBC), Merlin (TV)
Genre: Community: kinkme_merlin, Drama, Future Fic, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-23
Updated: 2011-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 21:28:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizufae/pseuds/Mizufae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt 'Arthur/Merlin "I wouldn't die for you"' In which Merlin has had to wait an extremely long time and also there's some sort of foot metaphor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mega-annum

The magic of the land is subsumed, thrumming beneath Merlin's feet, incorporated in the asphalt and the glass, the plastic and the micro-threaded carbon rods. He knows, as much as he knows his own hands and his own past, that the magic isn't gone and never will be - it's just as much a part of existence as plasma flares and gravity.

Merlin has stopped wearing shoes. He'd stopped wearing them at least a hundred years ago, once the rest of humanity got its act together and finally started to clean up after themselves, and now he can feel the magic welling up between his toes, gripping the soft earth as he walks towards the banks of the lake. The lake remains untouched - unseen by most and deliberately avoided by those who do see, by those few who Merlin knows are alive whenever he closes his eyes and spreads his awareness out like he's blowing a soap bubble through the planet, tapping the source of his magic, of his life.

He could have brought some of them along with him, but he knows it's not his place. Merlin has had friends for eons, companions and students, partners and teachers. He has done his best to take what the magic has given to him and create something more from it all, but time has a way of grinding down triumphs and slotting them into the smoothed predictability of history.

There's no justifiable reason for it - he could just take in a breath and continue walking on the surface of the lake, or become a fish, or fold the edges of space so the island was one step away from the shore, but Merlin's flaw for nostalgia and symmetry has never been sanded away. Even the centuries of madness did little to break him of the habit. So he lifts his hand and summons a coracle, the small brown boat like a hollowed walnut shell bobbing towards his glowing eyes.

The breeze picks up and threads through Merlin's hair as he cuts across the lake's surface. One hand guides the boat as the other waves around his face, shaping away the false lines of age, the speckled pepper beard he's adopted to earn automatic respect. Some people, Merlin knows, wield authority naturally, regardless of appearance, but Merlin isn't one of them. He's learned a few tricks, but today he won't need them anymore. Or ever again.

They'd called him Emrys. Immortal. But as far as Merlin's concerned, immortality is subjective.

Glancing up, he sees the ships, the hovering bulk of the factories rotating slowly in the dusky sky. They're building them as fast as possible, but fear is a crippling blow when not channeled in the right way. What's needed is a focus, what's needed is a leader, what's needed lies waiting in the open tomb centered on the overgrown island Merlin's coracle bumps into.

He cuts a path, not because he needs one going in, but because they'll need one going out. The ivy curls back in on itself for him, the trees bow over him like an escort of halberds. He can see the shapely metal buildings arching up around the lake through their branches. The stone walls leading to the tomb split open and peel back at Merlin's approach, folding away into an arch.

The words Merlin cut into the tomb remain untouched, but are surrounded by a close halo of lichen, as though the residual magic has held the growth at bay. They shimmer from within as Merlin approaches: Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rexque futurus. He'd done it in Latin at the time, of course, so they would remain comprehensible to anyone with an education. How shortsighted he had been! Languages are mutable, far moreso than magic ever is.

Blue and gold light fills the damp tomb, reflecting off the drips in the corner and the perfectly polished armor lying on the slab, protecting Arthur's body and preserving his soul. Merlin summons a few dozen more orbs of light, sets them to bump gently against the ceiling; as he steps forward, the soles of his feet make soft susurrations in the mossy floor.

Arthur's face is still, but pink, and although he does not breathe, he is warm to the touch. Merlin slides a hand up his cheek, and, looking around as though to make sure nobody's watching, climbs up to straddle Arthur's hips with his knees. The fine cotton of his trousers scrapes against the links of mail.

What if, what if it isn't time? What if humanity can do this without him? What if Merlin's magic, all those years ago, has not held? What if Arthur wakes a broken man, incapable of existing in a future so full of wondrous and terrifying things? Merlin settles over Arthur's body, pushes those worries away.

"It is time," he says, pulling down the temporal barriers and pushing blood through Arthur's heart. The gold sweeps up and through Arthur's tomb, washing against the walls and splashing against the tableau of Merlin arced over the armored king.

A shuddering, gasping breath comes up from deep within Arthur's chest, and Merlin keeps hands pressed over his heart and head, hooking his ankles behind Arthur's knees, willing the life and the magic and the love back into him. Their eyes snap open at the same time and Merlin grins wide at Arthur's raised eyebrows.

"Do you know what a millennium is, Arthur?" They sit side by side on the slab, speaking in another language long forgotten by most.

Arthur grumbles, stretches a shoulder. "Not particularly, no. Help me off with this, would you?" Merlin turns, begins to unbuckle Arthur's armor until an enormous wave of nostalgia threatens to overwhelm him and he banishes the plates instead. "So how long has it been? Come on, I want to know. A few hundred years? I can take it." Arthur pats his freshly revealed tunic, admiring the tiny embroidered dragons along the hem.

"A millennium is a thousand years." Arthur whistles. "A mega-annum is one thousand of those." Merlin folds his hands into his lap, bites the inside of his cheek. "You haven't been around for a while, you could say."

"I'm not sure..." Arthur hesitates, pulls one of Merlin's hands into his own, worries a thumbnail, "you must have been lonely," he eventually says.

"Oh, no, there have been people. Friends. Reasons to keep going. And besides, you might have been away but you were never gone." Merlin catches Arthur's eyes, knows that he can tell he's pushing the edges of truth. "I had to be sure you were really needed. I couldn't waste you."

Arthur chuckles a little. "I'm a valuable commodity?" Merlin nods. "I wonder how much salt you could get for me?"

"Now they pull salt from the air without magic."

A pause falls over them as Arthur absorbs that tidbit of knowledge. He pulls the fine weave of Merlin’s sleeve between two fingers, observing the inhuman precision and clarity of hue, before moving back to Merlin’s strong, stubbornly not-shuddering fingers.

He stills his ministrations on Merlin's knuckles and shifts so his nose rubs into the crook of Merlin's neck. "Why would you have waited so long? Surely you must have wanted to stop at some point. There must have been so many times..."

Merlin tangles fingers into Arthur's golden hair, streaked with white in such a young body. "I stopped a few times, actually. Turned off my brain and my heart and ran wild in the fields. It didn't make a difference."

"A difference?"

"They're still your people. All of them, whether they know it or not. You still love them, and they still love you. And I couldn't do that to them. Let them leave without taking you, let them all die without you to get them safely onboard."

Arthur frowns, quizzically, but Merlin can tell, he'll be able to handle it soon enough.

The magic slides around them, settling into a new rhythm, helping them understand what must be done. Merlin speaks quietly, with intent. "I couldn't do that to them. I wouldn't."

"But a thousand, thousand years?” Arthur lifts his face away, places his hand on Merlin’s shoulder. He’s looking at Merlin like he owes him an explanation.

Merlin can tell, the same way he can tell that this decision was correct despite the suddenly unwinding clock that is their stretched mortality, Arthur needs him to be truthful in this, to not prevaricate.

He takes a breath, shakes his head with a rueful smile. “I wouldn’t die.” Because he could have. He could have died under stones, in fire, from pollutants and the onrushing of revolution, the sheer strain of physicality. But just because Merlin could have died doesn’t mean he would have.

“I wouldn’t die, for you.”

The diaspora will succeed. They will die, far away from the land they knew. Merlin dies with a pleasurable smile. His feet will have touched the ground for the last time.


End file.
